


Kadomatsu

by Laeiphy



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Coping, Fluff, Gen, Gift!Fic, Hurt/Comfort, I heard the kids are calling it Gency now, Merji, Overwatch - Freeform, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, Prosthesis, Sad Christmas Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 08:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9312989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laeiphy/pseuds/Laeiphy
Summary: He didn’t know it was Christmas Day.Time has little meaning in a hospital room, and Genji hates his new reality of white walls, white coats, and denial over his brother's actions. All of this surges forward in painful waves from Angela Ziegler's hands in a barebones Overwatch medical wing over the holidays.He's a monster, a machine, and not worthy of kindness.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GenjiMain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenjiMain/gifts).



> Christmas present for my friend GenjiMain, who asked for festive Mercy and got Merji angst instead.

He didn’t know it was Christmas Day.

Time had little meaning in a hospital room. Humans, throughout the centuries, had tried to reduce the amount of time one spent alone in a room by themselves. 

At least modern hospitals tried; adding neutralizing chemicals into the air meant to mask their patients’ mortal decline, adding checklists of procedures and rules, colored paint on the walls, a cheerful and optimistic painting hung directly across the bed so that Genji Shimada could see the damn thing even when he had his eyes closed.

So, time for Genji meant very little at the present moment.

He didn’t know much of what actually happened to him, or even what month it actually was. After he stabilized, he stopped asking questions. His brother had almost succeeded in erasing him from the earth. Overwatch had stepped in. His old life was over. That was all he really could think about.

He didn’t like thinking of his mangled, new, painful Omnic body. His attending doctor had told him once his stumps had finished shrinking down, they’d go ahead and install the final prosthetics. 

Genji wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He only nodded at the right places in the conversation. It helped that Overwatch was steadfastly stuck in clumsy English.

On the other hand, Overwatch’s medical division seemed to exist in an Omnic-free, timeless bubble. Genji preferred to tune out the overly optimistic nurses and young doctors that came in constant streams all day.

He was helpful, if reluctant, to the ones to provide upkeep and check how his body was healing up. The ones meant to crack open his mental thoughts and help with his transition from human to a bastard Omnic… not so much.

They’d made him sign papers also, consenting to the changes they’d already done to save his body. And one officially joining the organization itself. He couldn’t refuse these, signing them mutely to satisfy Overwatch’s apparent legal and human resources team. A piece of paper was such a fragile bind to an organization that held his life in their hands.

He was told he’d be visited later by the head commander of Overwatch to discuss “repayment.” Genji couldn’t _wait_ for that talk.

But this morning, he’d woken up to a light dusting of Swiss snow outside his window, passing it as he hobbled on prosthetics and clumsily made his way to the attached bathroom to finally piss. 

After stumbling back to his bed, Genji realized that the hallways had been silent all morning. He’d overslept as well, the pain and outside noise had him up late into the night, and awake before the sun rose normally. It was a minor miracle. 

He’d paused at the main door to his room, leaning hard to support himself, sticking his head out. On a normal day, the hallway should be slightly busy with Overwatch’s fleet of nurses, doctors, and researchers. But nobody was present, just a janitorial robot mindlessly sweeping the floor. He had a surge of satisfaction swell up in him, for a moment, before his own bastardization made him bite whatever was left of his destroyed lip.

Disgusted, Genji stumbled back into his room, landing heavily on the bed. He should probably page for a doctor, see if anyone answered. It would be just his luck to rot away in a hospital room after touching death’s face itself.

Maybe something important had happ—

“Did you need anything?” a female voice came from behind him, and Genji twisted around so fast he his breath hitched in pain.

The doctor-worried face of Angela Ziegler was leaning inside his open doorway. Genji saw her blue eyes glance over at the beeping machines suddenly increasing their pace, and if he could still blush, would have. She carried a few folders in one hand, some sort of warm drink in the other.

Genji focused on returning his heartbeat to baseline human, before replying to his head doctor. He hadn’t seen her much, only in those first crucial weeks where he teetered on the brink of life or death. His recovery, and Omnicification, was handled by the rest of the _peons_ seemingly at her beck and call.

So, to say he was surprised to see the doctor in his room was an understatement.

“I was wondering where everyone was.” Genji said, his voice still gravely. He didn’t apologize.

Angela nodded, her eyes widening in understanding, pity. “They don’t have calendars in here. It’s Christmas Day.”

Christmas Day. Genji leaned back, surprised. Doing some on-the-fly math, he’d been in Overwatch’s medical bay for almost four months now. He hadn’t realized. Recovery was longer, much longer, than he had been expecting.

The doctors overseeing him had been optimistic and kept repeating things like ‘quick progress’ and ‘next steps.’ Apparently, he had been much more of a setback than anticipated.

“—and for essential personnel, volunteers come forward to work Christmas and Boxing Day.” Angela said as he tuned back into the present conversation.

“I see.” he said. He wondered exactly _why_ Doctor Ziegler had stayed behind. He imagined her with family. Parents, maybe siblings, over to celebrate Christmas. Maybe not the obligatory and unhealthy fried chicken him and his bro—

No.

“Why do you stay?” he asked, surprised he had even opened his mouth. It had come suddenly, the curiosity he once possessed surfacing once again, if only for a brief moment. His question felt very personal, too personal. But he wasn’t ashamed, anything to drag him away from moping.

Angela Ziegler knew Genji’s body medically, his most private internals that no other humans would ever see were likely recorded and stored somewhere in her computers. But not his mind, she did not know that.

Probably did not care, either.

Doctor Ziegler’s eyes were far away, he noticed. The uncomfortable quiet between them grew, Genji becoming increasingly uncomfortable at voicing the question. He brushed by the notion he should do something, say something, even apologize.

He didn’t know the doctor, the doctor certainly didn’t know him. 

But surprisingly, Angela spoke before his mind could think of anything to break their silence. 

“It makes little sense to celebrate Christmas in a graveyard, than to deny someone a rare day to celebrate with family.” she smiled, tight-lipped and small. “My grandparents passed away in March of this year.”

Genji refused to feel anything. Regret, sympathy for the doctor, he shoved into the distressingly large numb spot he possessed inside a corner of his mind.

“But.” Doctor Zeigler said, suddenly all business and familiarly vague again. “I do believe I can assist you like your team does for at least two days.” she smiled wirily.

“We can start now, if you’re not busy.” she said. Genji gave her a look. Of course he wasn’t busy, what did he have to do but lie in a hospital bed all day and recover from fratricide?

“No, now is fine.” he said. She smiled, pleased.

“On a scale of one to ten, Mister Shimada, how is your pain?” Angela finished up whatever drink she was holding with a final sip, before throwing it a wastebin hidden under the sink. She washed her hands briskly, snapping on a pair of nano-thin gloves that Overwatch seemed to have an endless supply of.

She ventured over to where he was laying, her blonde hair brushing her ear, and making Genji look away lest he give away his inner-monologue about the doctor. “I feel well enough. Two, Doctor.”

She smiled again, like a teacher who had been given a correct answer congratulating the student. 

“That’s very good.” Doctor Zeigler said, reaching for his left leg. “Let’s see how this one is coming along?”

Genji, leaned back and closed his eyes, preferring not to look while she did the checks on his prosthetics. The touching already made his skin crawl, the feeling of a doctor touching a limb that his mind said was still there was unsettling at best. But Anglea Zeigler stopped, causing him to open his eyes. Her blue eyes were looking at him curiously.

“Have you been taught or shown how your residual limbs function now?” she asked, and his shameful brown eyes looked away. No, he had not paid attention. But he could not bring the words to come to his mouth, could not see her happy teacher persona twist into something more disappointed. _Just like everyone else in his life…_

“I know a little,” he said, doing his best to tone down his disengagement with anything regarding his _stumps_. But Angela’s face still dropped a bit, before morphing into teacher mode again.

“That’s fine. I’ll show you, just as a refresher. In time, we will be able to fit you with more refined prosthetics.” she said. Patting his leg, “The ones you have right now are just to train your body and work with the shifting changes taking place.”

_As the end of my limbs shrivel up and die, you mean._ Genji said sarcastically in his head.

“This one,” Angela said, carefully disengaging the suction and locks keeping his left prosthetic in place, pulling back the liner. “Is shrinking very good. Any pain in the area?” Have you been keeping watch for blisters from the prosthetic?”

“No pain, no blisters.” he said, slightly overwhelmed. He saw his leg, the neural ports that had been installed and waiting for connection. The careful stitching, probably from the doctor herself, had healed, but left warning signs of them turning into brutal scars.

As she switched to his other leg, repeating the same actions, same questions, Genji answering quietly.

“I am sorry,” he said, as she finished up, disposing of her gloves in the same bin her coffee cup had vanished into. “For very rudely asking why you said at Overwatch for Christmas Day.”

Angela looked surprised. “It is human curiosity. I don’t mind questions.” she said, smiling softly. 

Genji shifted. He wanted the doctor to stay, oddly enough. Normally the doctors departed with nothing more than confirming the next time they would see him next. 

But it was Christmas Day. He longed for his family, his friends, his humanity. Angela Zeigler was looking to be his only fragile connection to whatever Christmas had been to him. And he wanted to reach out and touch her hand with his remaining human one, skin on skin for no other reason than him _missing_ contact.

He missed being human. He could bring himself to be forward, this one time.

“Do you have a good Christmas memory with your late grandparents?” he said from the bed, and her labcoat crinkled as she halted picking up her discarded paperwork. Angela looked oddly, as if confused, at her paperwork. It hid her face by the angle, but Genji could sightly see the various expressions shifting around.

“I… yes. I do.” she said, staring off. “They raised me after my parents passed. I remember my first Christmas with them, the Omnic Crisis had started only months ago. The fighting, the death, the confusion.

“My grandparents owned a farmhouse out in the Alps, inherited from my Opa’s father. They had raised goats out there, made cheese. We fled out there, just the three of us and my grandma’s cat, away from the cities. So my grandfather came along, and started it back up again. They weren’t letting people travel much in fear of Omnic strikes, but we couldn’t stay in fear.

“We arrived. And I remember it being cold, already having to fight a path up the mountain through snow. But certainly no Omnics could survive such snow, my Oma had said to me. So we celebrated the first Christmas after my parents’ passing up in the Alps.

“I remember how safe I felt, even if I was alone and missing my mother and father. We made Christmas cookies, and Opa felled a tree as a surprise for me and Oma. They presented me for Christmas a new set of the latest medical books, knowing that I had poured through my town’s university library. 

“My grandparents… they realized, and I did as well that Christmas, that I wasn’t the type of person to go flee to safety in the mountains. I wanted to help others, the same way I wished they had helped my parents. I had been given a gift by them, but it awoke something bigger inside of me.”

Angela finished, her voice trailing off uncertainly, coming back from her story to stare at the paperwork. “I apologize.” she said. “I didn’t mean to—“

“No, thank you for the story, Doctor Zeigler.” Genji said, hurriedly cutting off her apologies. “I asked, and you provide conversation. It’s not something that comes in great amounts here.”

Angela seemed unsure, but still gave a sigh of relief. “Then, as your doctor, I am glad to provide that. But I do have a few things to do today, as much as I wish we could chat.”

Genji was disappointed, but held back the emotion. “That is fine, I do not mind,” he lied. She nodded, understanding flooding her features as she heard the tinge of sadness that remained unhidden in his words.

“I will be back,” Angela said, grabbing her papers. “I believe the cooks have pre-made us what amounts to a Christmas dinner. Not your normal hospital cooks, either. I’ll come eat with you tonight, if you don’t object to eating with your doctor.”

“I would enjoy that.” Genji said, his heart despite his firm grip on it, flying up to his chest. It wasn’t exactly love, but long-forgotten companionship that sent longing through his body. 

“I will see you, later, Mister Shimada.” Doctor Zeigler said. She turned to leave the room.

“Genji.” he said loudly at her. Angela stopped in the doorway.

“Pardon?” she said, confused.

Genji flushed, his heart rising. “You can call me Genji, if that is alright?” he said, uncertain if he was stepping over Doctor Zeigler’s professional bounds.

She smiled, wider and more pleased than ever before. “Genji, then you can call me Angela. Only fair.” 

“Angela…” Genji said, savoring the word. “I will see you for dinner.”

Doctor Zeigler— Angela, his mind said —shut the door to his room behind her with a soft and careful sound. Genji lay back in his bed, sheets crinkling.

Swiss snow fell behind the glass of Genji’s window. 

A white Christmas. Maybe it was a good sign.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. A kadomatsu (see what I did here?) is a traditional Japanese decoration of the New Year placed in pairs in front of homes to welcome ancestral spirits or kami of the harvest.
> 
> 2\. In the prosthetics world, there’s an effort to refer to the protruding flesh left behind after an amputation as a “residual limb” instead of the more crude English word “stump.” Doctors would be obliged to refer to the end of missing parts as residual limbs.
> 
> 3\. Fratricide is the act of a person, directly or via use of an intermediary, that ultimately results in the killing of their brother. It’s from Latin, _frater_ meaning ”brother" and _cida_ or _caedere_ meaning "killer," or ”to kill, to cut down”. Hanzo and Genji are an example.
> 
> 4\. _Opa_ is roughly “grandfather” in German, while _Oma_ is “grandmother.” Angela uses them, since she would have been raised by them after her parents passed in the Crisis.
> 
> 5\. re: White Christmas being a sign. Ever watched Black Mirror? :)


End file.
